Author Jeffrey Kiehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), speculates on relationships between CO2 levels and average global surface temperature 30 million to 100 million years ago, and currently observed CO2 levels. To no one ‘s surprise, Kiehl assumes, without evidence, that atmospheric CO2 drives global average surface temperatures, and includes this bias in climate models, projecting an increase of atmospheric CO2 to 1,000 ppm by the end of the 21st Century, with temperatures soaring tens of degrees above the 20th Century average (whatever that means).

Since Science requires membership or hefty fees to access their publications, the average interested person cannot access the original article to verify the conclusions described in the “Perspectives” article.

However, it is clear from the tone of the article on the NCAR web site that this is ideologically driven publication, not scientific research. “If we don’t start seriously working toward a reduction of carbon emissions, we are putting our planet on a trajectory that the human species has never experienced,” says Kiehl. Thus government funded research is used to advance a political agenda.

The research cited in the article was funded by the National Science Foundation, which has a large Climate Change and Paleoclimate program. Researchers shopping for grant opportunities can go to the NSF web site and browse through the many funding programs, find one that fits and submit an application, or, as usually happens, many of them.

There’s nothing wrong with funding your favorite research with government grants. However, when that funding is used as a basis for political propaganda, such as advocating for political responses to climate change, a significant line has been crossed by the researcher, his or her employers and the funding agency itself. The researcher becomes a pawn in the interplay of government agencies, private research firms and economic interests, the science suffers from distorted interpretation and the public ends up with little or no understanding of the reality of the world around them.

Science must be conducted in the confines of the ivory tower, then released, naked and uninterpreted, into the clear light of day.

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70 thoughts on “More Unsubstantiated Global Warming Hype”

The only real comfort from all this, is that the more brazen the claims, the more outlandish the statements, the less the Public appears to belive them.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but ………………

Thi8s is as good a place as any to post my thoughts on the puzzling difference between long-term paleontological graphs of CO2 and temperature (which show no relationship) and the antarctic ice graphs, which have been posted on WUWT and which show a gorgeous correlation indeed. That correlation is a partial basis of opinions such as the one in this article.
Many here have commented on the antarctic graphs that the temperatures change around 6-800 years before the CO2 does. The explanation given is that temp changes cause/reduce CO2 outgassing from the oceans.
We have also seen here the annual graph of CO2 from Mauna Loa. This is steadily rising. Most believe that atmospheric CO2 is likewise steadily rising from fossil fuel emissions. The Mauna Loa graph has a very regular annual cycle of about the same magnitude every year. The explanation here is that land plants affect CO2 levels more than ocean flora do, there is much more land in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern, and CO2 drops in the summer while northern plants are growing and rises in the fall and winter when they die.
The antarctic graph has a sawtooth shape that is strikingly similar to that of the annual cycle. It seems likely that we are looking at similar celestial causes, whether mediated by oceans or not. The antarctic period is similarly regular, where the paleontological graphs are not.
The period of the antarctic graphs are said to be about 15 000 years. The cycle through the precession of the equinoxes is 26 000 years, but a half cycle would be about 13 000 years, which is a tolerable fit until the matter can be investigated in detail.

“Science must be conducted in the confines of the ivory tower, then released, naked and uninterpreted, into the clear light of day.”
You left out the climate change “science” exemption. 🙂
We can’t even see “naked” (real) data.

“It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that last existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.”

Unbelievable. Surely even the average Warmist can’t take this man seriously? I’ve never heard such a bunch of unsubstantiated crap in all my life. He actually seems to think that we’ve all forgotten that the various proxy records (which he humourously refers to as “observations”) show CO2 levels FOLLOW temperature, not vice versa, proving that CO2 is NOT a temperature DRIVER.
And if that’s not enough he disregards the myriad other factors and influences on Earth’s climate, and decides in his wisdom that temperature is absolutely directly connected solely with CO2 levels, so if CO2 levels equal “Y” then temperature must equal “Z” – genius.
Jeez, if this is the best they’ve got…

Can anyone tell me if there is a peer reviewed paper that purports to show humans are causing global warming? What about one that shows carbon dioxide causes global warming? Just asking.
It might seem silly but I’ve never found either one. And you’d think either one would be cited over and over and picked apart over and over. Many peer reviewed papers cite the IPCC as the source of their assumption of both humans and/or carbon dioxide causing global warming but I’ve never found a peer reviewed basis.

I agree with the principle that you can learn a lot from the Earth’s past.
However, even a cursory look back at the past suggests that there is no substantial correlation between CO2 levels and temperature. Looking back at the past one sees that there are periods when there were high levels of CO2 and yet the earth was cold, there were periods of low CO2 levels and yet the earth was hot, there are periods when CO2 levels are rising and yet the earth is cooling, and there are periods when CO2 levels are falling and yet temperatures are increasing.
In fact one only has to look at the Holocene optimum, the Roman Warm period and the Medieval warm period and look at CO2 levels at those times to see that the assumed relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature is wrong.
Indeed, one does not even need to go that far back. One only has to look at temperatures from 1850 onwards to see that there is no substantial correlation between temperature and CO2 levels: 1850 to 1880 increase in temps, no significant increase in CO2, 1880 to 1910 decrease in temperature but no decrease in CO2, 1910 to 1940 increase in temperature but no significant increase in CO2, 1940 to 1970 drop in temperature yet increase in CO2, 1970 to 1995 increase in temps and increase in CO2, 1996 to 2010 fairly level temperatures possibly increasing slightly yet significant increase in CO2. Thus there is only one period (1970 to 1996) where there is both an increase in temperatures and an increase in CO2, and hence all but no correlation between temperatures and CO2 during the past 150/160 years. Further, the period 1960 to 1970 and the recent period post 1995 runs contrary to the assumption that increasing CO2 levels leads to an increase in temperatures.
In conclusion, neither on a geological time scale or on a modern time scale is there any substantial correlation between CO2 levels and temperature. Whilst correlation does not prove causation, the lack of correlation invariably disproves causation. It would be an understatement to point out that the lack of correlation is not at all promising to the validity of the AGW theory.

The final sentence of the penultimate paragraph of my earlier post should have read:
Further, the period 1940 to 1970 and the recent period post 1995 runs contrary to the assumption that increasing CO2 levels leads to an increase in temperatures.

Interstingly, yesterday a radio four reporter, here in the UK, pushed a Met Office official to connect the floods in Brazil, Australia etc with Climate Change, he wouldn’t. My flabber was truly gasted!

Kiehl’s point is that we are driving CO2 to levels not seen since the time of the dinosaurs and that if global temperature was 16C warmer back then than present then that implies high climate sensitivity and therefore a strong contribution from the CO2 level of that time.
If you don’t believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas, or have some absurd idea that temperature drives CO2 not the otherway round then never-mind, go find something else to do. Kiehl’s talk is obviously aimed at those like me who accept the significance of the CO2 rise and it’s interesting to hear that the longterm climate sensitivity might be much greater than the short term sensitivity.

onion says:
“If you… have some absurd idea that temperature drives CO2 not the otherway round then never-mind, go find something else to do.”
And down is up, white is black, war is peace, and global warming causes global cooling.
Anyone who has ever opened a warm beer knows that temperature controls CO2 outgassing. Ice core data shows that CO2 follows temperature. Kiehl is just displaying his ignorance, and onion is frightening himself.

It would be interesting to plot the timeline for these climate “scare” stories/press releases, and observe how well it correlates with the UCAR/NCAR budget cycle.
I think you will see much more of this kind of junk over the next few months as these government research groups try to influence Congress to keep them well funded with (dwindling) Climate Ca$h.
By the way, did you know that UCAR/NCAR (along with our climate buddies at NASA) received stimulus money in 2009-2010??? The NCAR research highlighted here is one of many great “climate products” your stimulus/tax dollars helped to purchase last year…

Lady Life Grows says:
January 14, 2011 at 1:39 pm
“……The period of the antarctic graphs are said to be about 15 000 years. The cycle through the precession of the equinoxes is 26 000 years, but a half cycle would be about 13 000 years, which is a tolerable fit until the matter can be investigated in detail.”
Don’t forget that over geological time frames the actual axis of our planet has shifted as well as our orbital shape and proximity to the sun as well as the precession. This is not to mention all of the multitude of other variables such as varying TSI, impacts, volcanism, plate tectonics and their effects upon ocean currents, lunar orbit, etc., etc. Even the gases trapped in ice cores change over long periods of time making those measurements suspect.
Explaining climate over geological time frames is a fools errand. God is laughing at our hubris.

“”””” onion says:
January 14, 2011 at 1:57 pm
“It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that last existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.” “””””
Well doesn’t the data back to the PreCambrian 600 million BC, say that earth has never been hotter than +22 deg C, and never colder than +12 deg C. so it has never gone outside of a 10 deg C spread in that time frame; which makes the above statement nonsense on both counts; pre-Industrial, and ancient.
I’m prepared to believe that CO2 like other GHGs can warm the atmosphere through LWIR absorption from the surface. CO2 and H2O can also cool the earth SURFACE, by intercepting incoming solar energy, to stop it reaching the surface, and then sending about half that energy out into space as LWIR emission (isotropic) from the warmed atmosphere.
I have yet to be convinced that much of the heat added to the atmosphere from GHG LWIR absorption, subsequently warms the surface (very much); or that cloud variation doesn’t pretty much wipe out any such effect.
But that’s just my opinion; I’ll await the data from those who have proof (measured observational proof; not computer simulated, or proxy proof).

“Earth’s hot past could be prologue future climate”
My fist up the science editor’s fart hole could be a wonderful experience even for me, but somehow for some odd and very weird reason I highly doubt it.

onion says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
…”Kiehl’s talk is obviously aimed at those like me who accept the significance of the CO2 rise and it’s interesting to hear that the longterm climate sensitivity might be much greater than the short term sensitivity.”
=============
Darn it, you convinced me.
It is worse than we ever thought.
When you convince China and India, get back to me.
Sarc/

Since Science requires membership or hefty fees to access their publications, the average interested person cannot access the original article to verify the conclusions described in the “Perspectives” article.
Well there are these things called libraries or then again $3/week isn’t really a ‘hefty fee’.

It’s hard to tell anymore….
…are these people stupid?….lying on purpose?..hiding all the facts?
=========================================================
“It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that last existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.”
========================================================
That would also be the levels of the early Carboniferous, about 350 million years ago. When almost everything evolved, because conditions were the best for life.
Of course they don’t ask the obvious questions after that….
….why did the planet suffer a mass extinction
….why did the planet go into an ice age
….why did CO2 levels crash
Knowing that plants and animals evolved when CO2 levels were in the thousands…
..knowing that those CO2 levels were multitudes higher than we are, and still crashed
…knowing that in spite of those thousands ppm CO2, the planet still went into an ice age
…Knowing how low our temps really are right now
….Knowing how low our CO2 levels really are right now
…. Knowing that we are just about 100ppm above where plants stop growing

@onion said January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm:
Onion, CO2 historically followed warming as part of the feedback phase of the carbon cycle, which in turn causes more warming … that was the primary CO2 footprint before man ramped up his intervention in the natural cycles. Now we’re digging up millions of years of sequestered carbon based deposits and combusting their byproducts into the atmosphere. The CO2 man is releasing is now a climate forcing element … which will cause warming and the release a of more CO2 as a feedback … which will cause more warming …
… there are hardcore “skeptics” that still claim man doesn’t have the ability to materially impact Earth’s climate … on religious grounds or otherwise …

onion says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Kiehl’s point is that we are driving CO2 to levels not seen since the time of the dinosaurs
==================================================
onion, what you should be asking yourself is why not
Why were CO2 levels that high and then crashed.
What is going on that CO2 levels have fallen to levels that preceeded mass extinctions.
What kind of idiots would build a science around record low CO2 levels, and who is stupid enough to believe that.

A thought:
The earth has experienced 1000 ppm of CO2 in the past and has survived!
Earth has done this without human.
What is than the problem?
I guess becuse we humans producing it. Are we not part of nature or what?
I just noticed that my last heating bill this winter (so far) is much higher than before. Where is this warming. It doesn’t look like global.
Guess what, my CO2 footprint has increased because of this abnormal cold winter.

I sincerely with these non geologists would confine themselves to their numeric models and leave us empirical scientists alone. This is no better then the great global cooling that was being predicted (I think by so of the same people) in the 70’s. It was BS then and is BS now. The one constant in all this is the small.

The merry-go-round of AGW logic never ceases to amaze. GCMs have great difficulty in reproducing the observed diurnal cycle of surface temperatures and the observed lapse rate on a day to-day-basis. But this doesn’t deter Kiel from “calculating the greenhouse effect”for millions of years in the past and talking about the results as if they were the product of a physical experiment. How long will such mind games be taken seriously?

… there are hardcore “skeptics” that still claim man doesn’t have the ability to materially impact Earth’s climate … on religious grounds or otherwise …

I choose temporal grounds.
The Earth has been here billions of years. The “excess” man-made emissions have only been happening about a hundred years. The next glaciation is coming, we cannot stop it, and there will be many more after it.
Chart out the temperature record of Earth a million years from now, down to a resolution of 500 years or so. Any sentient studying it would be hard pressed to determine mankind was here at all, let alone had any material impact on Earth’s climate at any point whatsoever.
We don’t have the ability to materially impact the Earth’s climate. As far as the Earth is concerned, anything we’ve done has been lost in the noise.

Trenberth is also at NCAR…
Yes carbo-revisionnism is another aspect of the cult. Not happy with manipulating todays data, they now rewrite the recorded history archives so they fit the paradigm, in Europe for instance.
Now they push it to paleoclimates and geological records.

Science must be conducted in the confines of the ivory tower, then released, naked and uninterpreted, into the clear light of day.
I couldn’t agree more.
But that is not the approach that the doctrine called Post Normal Science believes in. It is a doctrine which is the corruption of science and the corruption of scientists.
It is apparently common now in UK academia and Prof Hulme of UEA and the founder of the Tyndal Centre on Climate Change is an adherent of this doctrine or discipline. Perhaps that explains a lot about CRU and the climategate emails.
In Hulme’s own words as reported at http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/ :
“…‘self-evidently’ dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking…scientists – and politicians – must trade truth for influence. What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy.”
“Climate change is telling the story of an idea and how that idea is changing the way in which our societies think, feel, interpret and act. And therefore climate change is extending itself well beyond simply the description of change in physical properties in our world…”
“The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved…It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change – the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals – to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.”
“We need to reveal the creative psychological, spiritual and ethical work that climate change can do and is doing for us…we open up a way of resituating culture and the human spirit”
That doctrine explains what is wrong and why. It holds that scientists can and should tailor results to suit what is the ‘right thing to do’ for mankind or society and gives them the freedom to decide what that is and to act as advocates for it.
If it permeates throughout science then it will be the death of honesty and truth in science.

“Since Science requires membership or hefty fees to access their publications, the average interested person cannot access the original article to verify the conclusions described in the “Perspectives” article.”
No. You can go to the nearest research university library and buy a courtesy card.
“The current issue of the elitist “science” journal, Science, …”
So is the NBA the elitist basketball association?

@kadaka (KD Knoebel) said January 14, 2011 at 4:30 pm:
You seem to have very serious difficulty with the scale of timelines … the implication of our, perhaps, profound impact on human existence on Earth over the next few hundred years vs. the timeline and impact of Earth’s orbital features. Don’t feel bad, sadly you’re not alone here.

I don’t have access to the actual paper but it is clear every statement in the video and in the press reports made by Kiehl is a completely ridiculous exaggeration.
The paper is not available, but there are two charts available on the Science website and I believe I have the data he is using. Kiehl’s chart below.http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/5420/science2011jan331601415.gif
Well, here is the actual CO2 data it seems Kiehl used (there are a few discrepancies but it is close enough) and the temperature data over the same period (Sorry, but Excel does not like doing charts with time going in the same direction as Kiehl’s chart – so mine are in the other direction).http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/2844/tempco2ppm45m.png
And here is the CO2 data at 3.0C per doubling – off by a major amount – 1.5C per doubling seems to be closer.http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4869/tempco230cdoubling45m.png
Kiehl is trying to say that the Earth’s temperature was 16.0C above today at some point in the period (or perhaps 100 Mya I don’t know) but it was not even close to that.
Kiehl’s math is really saying that the CO2 sensitivity is 5.5C per doubling. His calculator might not be working right. Does he think that people will not check these ridiculous claims?
I note he is often partners with Trenberth so it seems this might be part of a propaganda campaign where the pro-AGW set just accept every claim made without actually checking how far off of reality they are. Kiehl and Trenberth are really just playing to the believers anyway, not to the people who check claims and numbers.

He says that on longer time scales the effect of CO2 is twice what it is on shorter time scales. I don’t know exactly what the response time of a CO2 moleecule is in exerting its greenhouse effect. But I do know that it doesn’t take a thousand years to do an IR spectrum. So if his “observation” is correct I think that the extended time scale is clear evidence against CO2 as the cause.

Maybe it’s been a good thing that we intervened to arrest the catastrophic decline in carbon dioxide concentrations, which otherwise would eventually have fallen to levels incapable of supporting life.

$3 a week, $12 a month, $144 a year is a LOT of money for me: semi-retired, working part-time.
Besides, this research was funded with our tax dollars. We’ve already paid for it! Where does Science magazine get off charging us to read OUR research?

Bill Illis says:
January 14, 2011 at 6:48 pm
“The paper is not available,….” to people who are too lazy to go to a library.
“….I believe I have the data he is using.”
Surely any non-elitist reviewer would accept that claim.
Hey, let’s take a bunch of bloggers and form a basketball team and watch what happens when they try to play any NBA team. Oh, and in NBA games they use real referees.

Michael A. Lewis, Ph.D. says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:40 pm
$3 a week, $12 a month, $144 a year is a LOT of money for me: semi-retired, working part-time.
Besides, this research was funded with our tax dollars. We’ve already paid for it! Where does Science magazine get off charging us to read OUR research?
—————————
I love to watch the free enterprise types get all upset when they have to pay for something!

I think at least one of his assumptions are incorrect. He mentioned that with our current fossil fuel consumption that by 2100 CO2 will be about 1000ppm (0:43 in video). My understanding was current levels are about 390ppm rising approx 2ppm per annum or 180ppm over the next 90 years. He’s implying an increase of 610ppm over the 90 years. 1000ppm or 570ppm?

What a grand example of a opportunistic liar, or idi-t …or both. Please, make revolution or something against giving such people and projects any government money!
The correlation between temperature and CO2 in the ice age cycle (the “Al Gore diagrams”) that poor man knows for sure is the other way around.

Mike January 14, 2011 at 10:01 pm says:“I love to watch the free enterprise types get all upset when they have to pay for something!”.
You choose to have sarcasm against pro-free market people and to pay for this. (I don’t think everyone against the lie CAGW is pro-free markets.) But this isn’t to pay any bill. It’s to pay government to promote lies, which are used to ultimately transform society to control the economy, which will at least restrain free enterprise! Even you should understand the logic here.
My criticism is just against that any tax payer should pay for this BS. Since you criticism against me as opposing this is criticism against me as a prommoter of free enterprise, I guess you don’t promote free enterprise. It seems as if many CAGW activists are highly critical to, and/or against free markets (capitalism).

Whoosh. That’s the sound of the point of this article going right over the heads of WUWT posters. It’s not one crappy paper that’s the problem but the whole peer review process. Small wonder that the cargo cult scientists spout it’s wonders to behold. It’s because peer review is eminently corruptible.
You pay for the privilege of headline grabbing “research” but are not allowed to examine the full paper without subscribing too a privately owned and profit oriented media outlet.
Do you as a taxpayer feel this farce should continue?

Oh yes there is, *if* those are taxpayer funded grants (as opposed to grants from some private foundations or maybe private corporations). The taxpayers, which are actually a small percentage of the entire public are writing these checks. It’s about time we get some respect, and we will, eventually.

Michael A. Lewis, Ph.D. [January 14, 2011 at 7:40 pm] says:
“Besides, this research was funded with our tax dollars. We’ve already paid for it! Where does Science magazine get off charging us to read OUR research?”

Now you’re getting the hang of it! It is my opinion that this type of argument with its healthy dose of righteous indignation is the most productive. Political Scientists that waste our money targeting our very way of life and our children’s, represent the ripe low hanging fruit and easiest to pick.

BioBob [January 14, 2011 at 1:35 pm] says:
“defund all federal science programs and let evolution take its course. the current system is irrevocably corrupted.”

I’m with you brother, and believe me the number of people is really growing. It is clear that the warmies are going to make it easy for us now, with their endless obsessive compulsive rants even during a winter of epic proportions. Changes are coming. One might say a sea-level change but not the kind they’re expecting.
Ironically when that sea change is complete, that of a new paradigm of defunded institutions, the warmies will only have themselves to blame. Not only have they made laughingstocks of themselves, but they have made a mockery of the taxpayers that work endless hours to feed their families and pay for a roof over their heads (shelter from the horrific global warming this winter). They have also made a mockery of everything noble that Science as an institution has fought so hard for, for several millennia. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and endless list of pioneers are rolling over in their graves.

davidc says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Bill Illis:
If your graph is correct then over the period 25Mya to 35Mya temperature is falling while CO2 is rising. So CO2 is innocent.
——————————–
All these contradictions are well known by the researchers working in the area. They try their best to ignore it.
If they write a paper about this period, they will select a single date (like Kiehl did) and try to say “see, CO2 is driving the climate”. If look at 27 Mya to 25 Mya, the declining CO2 line crosses the temperature line. You can say 3.0C per doubling works in that period. You can take one spike estimate at 20 Mya or 5 Mya and say 3.0C per doubling works.
It doesn’t work in the 12,000 other data points over the rest of the period but it works in 20 of them so that is the ones they use. The trends, however, are nearly completely independent of one another and one has to be blind to see 3.0C per doubling in the numbers.
Now if one views the continental alignment and ocean current changes over the period, one has much more complete picture and a better explanation for what happened.http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/695/tempgeog45m.png
I note this view more closely matches what used to be known as the drivers of Earth’s climate (before the CO2-domination view took over).http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm34/cruiser_naz/Models/DSCN0727.jpg

onion says: January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Kiehl’s talk is obviously aimed at those like me who accept the significance of the CO2 rise and it’s interesting to hear that the longterm climate sensitivity might be much greater than the short term sensitivity.
Thus proving that you can fool some of the people ALL of the time.

Mike says: January 14, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Hey, let’s take a bunch of bloggers and form a basketball team and watch what happens when they try to play any NBA team. Oh, and in NBA games they use real referees.
Hey, I’ve got a better idea, let’s take a bunch of climate scientists and form a basketball team. Let’s see how well they do against an NBA team.
Don’t you just love the logical capabilities of some people. Of course, scientific types will have no chance against athletic types. You could also take a group of baseball players and pit them against science bloggers playing basketball and the baseball players would win.
The problem with your idiotic attempt at an analogy is the bloggers here are composed of scientific types and many have as good, if not better, scientific training than the climate scientists you believe are infallible.
I think the poor logic used by Mike is just one more example of the lack of critical thinking abilities displayed by most warmists.

Mike says: January 14, 2011 at 10:01 pm
I love to watch the free enterprise types get all upset when they have to pay for something!
Another example of poor thinking. Nowhere did the person state they believed in “free enterprise” yet Mike assumes he does. Now, one question to Mike might be, what do YOU believe in? I can only expect it must be some form of communist govt since he obviously does not like free enterprise.
BTW, I live about 90 miles from the nearest University library. Running back and forth every time I wanted to read a paper is not reasonable. And, of course, many people live much further away than myself.

I am reminded once again of President Eisenhower’s prescient speech. He was describing a trend away from indpendent scientists tinkering in their labs, to a new elite of government funded scientists. He understood that this would lead to advocacy by the scientists, the distortion and manipulation of science and its eventual complete absorption into a government instrument of propaganda.
Lewis, Trenberth and the others are ‘to be gravely regarded.’

onion says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pmKiehl’s talk is obviously aimed at those like me…
Yes, we know, because only the most hopelessly misinformed and delusional of CAGW Believers could possibly be taken in by his government-funded drivel. Looks like his aim was swift and sure.

Patrick in Adelaide,
Can’t locate the figures just now but there has been a step change in the amount of fossil fuel burning, particularly coal, over the last 15 years as China and India and other developing countries have ramped up their energy use. But CO2 in the atmosphere continues to grow at roughly 2ppm per annum.
So where is the connection?

@kadaka (KD Knoebel) said January 14, 2011 at 4:30 pm:
You seem to have very serious difficulty with the scale of timelines … the implication of our, perhaps, profound impact on human existence on Earth…

Whoa, hold up! Change of subject there, pardner.
You, previously: “…to materially impact Earth’s climate …”
You, now: “…our, perhaps, profound impact on human existence on Earth…”
Looks like you have a problem with self-importance, which is pretty common. Far as the Body Earth is concerned, this big ball orbiting around the Sun, all of mankind’s “impact” is akin to a pimple, perhaps less than that. Such talk may upset the Gaia worshipers, but it’s true. Earth was here long before us, Earth will be here after us, our total “impact” will be a transitory blip, its effects erased over time.
In my previous comment you so maligned, I had carefully chosen a 500 year resolution for the timeline. We human critters are smart enough to keep our own cages clean, once we learn how to. We also can figure out how to manage our available resources. And technology marches on. You think CO2 emissions are a problem? We’re always getting more energy efficient than we used to be, since energy costs money and people don’t like spending money they don’t have to spend. As long as new technology lets us do the same thing for less money, people will adopt it. As to the cage cleaning, we’ve learned the importance of a clean environment, with clean air and water. We’ve gotten pretty good at cleaning up after ourselves, and we’ll get better. The major problem now is getting our fellow human critters to do the same, supplying the knowledge and technology and getting them motivated to do the same. Your changed subject, mankind’s impact on itself, is being taken care of, brought about by “enlightened self-interest” if nothing else.
So cleaner energy sources are coming. We have nuclear, with improved designs like the CANDU reactor. Once we get rid of the subsidy-driven market that’s keeping less-efficient tech profitable, solar may become a worthy supply. Residential and larger users are discovering the benefits of ditching furnaces altogether and going with geothermal heat pumps, there are even homes without any heating system that do just fine in frigid winters. Plus fusion power shall be coming along any day now…
Thus those “excess” CO2 emissions shall be declining in a microscopic bit of geological time. Even if humans don’t manage it, this interglacial shall end soon, and many to most of the potential sources of fossil fuels shall be buried under a mile or so of ice, unreachable, which will tend to greatly restrict their use.
Besides, we’re overdo for a surge in population-destroying plagues, with limited remaining effective antibiotics. Since far less humans means less CO2 emissions, that’ll make some people happy.
Thus in the long view, mankind does not have the ability to materially impact Earth’s climate, and certainly will not by the proposed CO2 -> (C)AGW mechanism. If it upsets you that you might not see a desired noticeable change in Earth’s climate brought about by humans within your own tenth-of-an-eye-blink lifespan, as is common among Green activists and (C)AGW proponents, tough, that’s your problem. The Earth doesn’t even know you are here.

Mike says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Bill Illis says:
January 14, 2011 at 6:48 pm
“The paper is not available,….” to people who are too lazy to go to a library.
“….I believe I have the data he is using.”
Surely any non-elitist reviewer would accept that claim.
————————–
Same argument applies to those that are too lazy to check the assertions for themselves.
I spent a great deal of time gathering up all the data that is available on the paleoclimate. I do so continuously. So I wouldn’t describe myself as lazy about this.

@ LevelGaze on January 15, 2011 at 9:34 pm:
After researching the proposed candidates for fusion power, I came to this conclusion:
Commercially-viable fusion power shall always be coming along any day now, starting twenty years from now. ☺

I’m really starting to notice a lot of cyncism in the general public the past 6 months or so with respect to the climate change fraternity. The whole “because of climate change” phrase is now becoming a bit of joke for people to use now….
“My football team lost… must be because of climate change”.
“My son won’t finish his dinner…must be because of climate change”. (etc .)
And here is Oz, especially with the Queensland floods, the general public are seeing right through the shrill garbage spewing out of the mouths of Sackett, Lowe, Williams, Steketee etc.
The ‘history deniers’ are losing their followers and losing them fast. Bit by bit they keep digging the hole, and bit by bit it gets bigger and bigger.

Cam says:
January 16, 2011 at 4:19 am
“The ‘history deniers’ are losing their followers and losing them fast. Bit by bit they keep digging the hole, and bit by bit it gets bigger and bigger.”
—–
But so far the only thing going into that hole is our hard-earned money as they continue to ramp up useless sequestration efforts. We might be winning the argument but we can still lose the war against crippling taxation.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” — Maurice Strong, Executive Director UNEP, Executive Member of The Club of Rome.

onion says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
“Kiehl’s talk is obviously aimed at those like me who accept the significance of the CO2 rise …”
_________
What significance?
It seems to have escaped your attention that the force on the temperature decreases logarithmically with rising CO2 concentration. The propagandists have managed to turn this around, to implant in people’s minds a magical formula for thermal runaway that thrives on imagination and ignorance.
(Hmmm? I was going to insert a graph but there’s no [img] tag in the list below the comment box)

Old England says:
January 14, 2011 at 4:58 pm
“In Hulme’s own words as reported at ”
Thanks a lot; the quotes went into my archive. Hulme is a true machiavellist. Watch the biodiversity campaign. It’s the next vehicle for them. (The IPCC is dead.)

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